ALLISON’S STORY

1.

I waited for Turk among the aircraft on the docking level high above the city.

I had taken a twisty route to get here, up the quiet starboard terraces and along the shaded parkland corridors Treya had loved as a child. Every garden and gateway along the way was freighted with memory (her memory). It was hard not to grieve. Vox was dying and there was nothing I could do about it—nothing I could do for lost friends or the family that had ostracized me or the city I had once loved. Nothing except carry my memories and misgivings to a safer place, worlds away.

The aircraft bay was an open terrace, protected from the toxic atmosphere by an electrostatic roof. Voxish aircraft were aligned across this vast flat acreage as if they had been planted there, silvery crops in a mechanical garden. The maintenance and flight crews had all gone home to be with their families. My footsteps sounded like water dripping in a vacant room.

I found an inconspicuous place at the base of a light tower and sat down and waited. An uncomfortable amount of time passed. I began to think Turk might not show up. That he might have been prevented from showing up. That he might have chosen not to show up. The node had finally infiltrated the parts of his brain that governed love, loyalty, needs, and desires, and with every passing moment the neural webwork grew more subtle and efficient. The Coryphaeus was singing a soft, sweet refrain in the echo chamber of his medial prefrontal cortex.

What if he didn’t come? But it was an easy question to answer: I would die here. In all likelihood the Hypothetical machines would dismantle and consume Vox Core the way they had dismantled and consumed the vanguard expedition out on the Antarctic plain, and that would be the end of it. I felt an uncontrollable upwelling of fear. Not the predictable fear of dying but the special and very Voxish fear of dying alone …

Then I heard a door slide open in one of the transport pods some distance away. I hid myself and waited until I was sure it was Turk. He walked out of the vertical transport stiffly, maybe reluctantly. His expression was hollow and haggard. I called his name and ran to him.

*   *   *

Because Vox was a peaceful and crime-free community it had little use for internal security beyond the routine vigilance of the Network. But for much of its history Vox had been at war with external powers, chiefly the bionormative communities of the Middle and Elder Worlds. Our aircraft were weapons of war, and they were secured as weapons of war.